tropes_fanonfandomcom-20200214-history
The Colbert Effect/Anime
Anything can sell well if it's got a Dragon Ball Z design on it. How is this possible? You can thank Dragon Ball Z being aired on Toonami as a factor. *Likewise, anything with One Piece on it can and will sell well. Especially in Japan, where it is the best-selling manga of all time. *Girls would want anything, so long as it's got Hello Kitty on it. This was especially true in the 1970s, so much that Sanrio has its first Hello Kitty product ever to be sold on display in some headquarters. **Hello Kitty herself caused this for Sanrio despite being the first character they ever made. She's still among the company's mascots, alongside My Melody, Pompompurin, and Cinnamoroll. *How do you get a then-obscure anime and video game franchise by the name of Pocket Monsters popular in the West? Use clever marketing, that's how! And that's how Pokémon became a cultural phenomenon (and the best selling media franchise of all time). *Speaking of Pokémon, a bad example lies within 4Kids Entertainment. When they started localizing its anime series, they changed stuff around to make it appeal more to American audiences. Nobody except for the biggest anime purists out there knew about this. They went further with Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, and once again, only the biggest anime purists noticed. But their localization of One Piece and the rise of the abridged series basically turned 4Kids into nothing more than a laughing stock overnight, to the point where they lost their Pokémon anime license in 2006, so that The Pokémon Company USA could gain all rights to the series outside of Asia. Eventually 4Kids had to file for bankruptcy to escape the debt they had accrued over this, as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being purchased by Nickelodeon, the loss of their deal with Fox (which would ironically enter talks with Disney to buy them out 10 years later, somewhat foreshadowed by Disney assuming the Fox Kids library 16 years before), and the aforementioned loss of their Pokémon license (not to mention they were struck with a lawsuit filed by TV Tokyo over Yu-Gi-Oh!). They re-organized into 4Licensing Corporation, sold most licenses to its former properties to Saban Brands (which itself was closed following the Power Rangers acquisition by Hasbro) in the process, and five years after emerging, had to file for bankruptcy again. *Anime television series in general went through this. In Japan, this was attributed to Instant History, a little-known (outside Japan) series about historical events. Outside Japan and South Korea, this was attributed to the first Astro Boy series. *This is what caused Digimon Frontier to get a United Kingdom release, 16 years after its North American release. To clarify: at least hundreds of British Digimon fans, angry that the show wasn't released in the UK and thus was obscure outside their fangroup, decided to write to Manga Entertainment hundreds upon hundreds of requests. This would ultimately get the show a direct-to-DVD release in the region, set for October 2018. *Kill la Kill, and before that, Little Witch Academia, caused this for then-unknown animation company Studio Trigger. It says much when even the anime of When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, which is otherwise an obscure light novel/manga, got dubbed after that bump. **It also helps that the company was founded by former Gainax animators. *Hayao Miyazaki has been a well-known animator since Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (and before that, he was known for directing episodes of Lupin the Third, alongside working with Toei Animation), but the success of My Neighbor Totoro caused this to happen to the company he co-founded, Studio Ghibli, to the point where you can find Totoro merchandise at anime conventions and Hot Topic to this day. *Yu-Gi-Oh! caused this for Season Zero, despite the latter ironically never going outside Japan. *The Big O only got a second season because of the American audience and the funding from Cartoon Network; anything on Toonami at the time would become an instant hit there. But on the Japanese side, The Big O remained obscure until Super Robot Wars, where it became a cult hit (again, The Big O's been a cult hit in America even before the titular robot was featured in Super Robot Wars). *''Kamisama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama'' got a very miniscule bump in popularity among the Anglosphere when The Crane Couple showed off a Melory plush during a Toreba unboxing. *Discotek Media holds the title for releasing the first North American 4K UltraHD anime release- Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie (set for release in October 2019). This made Discotek more popular than they already were among anime fans and 4K collectors. *Toonami and Adult Swim are probably the ultimate litmus test for this trope in anime. If the anime is popular on either Cartoon Network block, it could become just as popular in North America as it is in Japan (or in the case of Dragon Ball Z, get pushed into the mainstream). However, this can even happen to anime that are obscure in their native Japan, thus you have series such as The Big O, FLCL, and Deadman Wonderland that didn't bat an eye over in Japan yet are cult hits in the US. **This can even cause anime with a significant cult following (such as Pilot Candidate and Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo) to get re-released on home media, often courtesy of Discotek Media. **This is also what got the first Sailor Moon dub out of cancellation... before it tragically stopped at the end of SuperS. It would take until 2019 for a brand new English dub (courtesy of Viz Media) to be completed.